


Partners in Crime

by BytheSea (ye_old_cactus)



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Not Beta Read, no happy ending, or i guess it depends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-18
Updated: 2018-06-18
Packaged: 2019-05-24 21:17:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14962337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ye_old_cactus/pseuds/BytheSea
Summary: Kaidan is tired and barely coping.





	Partners in Crime

**Author's Note:**

> i found this shit in my drafts and i fucking hate it, so, have this badly written drabble im fucking bawling

It was a stupid song and Kaidan couldn’t really tell where he’d heard it before, especially right now with how foggy and fucked his mind felt, but still, he tried to focus on it... the melody, the lyrics, even the instruments, but he couldn’t… tell. There were a million and one sounds coming in from his open window, even when it was 3 a.m. and he was also fucking freezing which made it more difficult to focus, but he didn’t want to move, mostly because the sounds were the only thing keeping him sane and that despite the time and the sounds and everything else, he had no idea why this particular song caught his attention.

In a different situation, he’d find it dorky, something not worth paying attention to, but then, because of that same reason, he finally realized where he’d heard it before.

Blasto 6: Partners in Crime.

John’s favorite movie, the last movie they saw during their shore leave when they were together for the last time.

Kaidan had never seen a Blasto movie, he wasn’t interested, and he had way more important things to do, but Shepard convinced him—if telling him two times with a pout could be called “convincing”—so, they ended up watching the first five movies in one single sitting, starting at 10 in the morning and finally finished at the cinema for the sixth and last one out.

He had hated them _all_ , the movies were like the embodiment of the nasty concoction he had to drink during his stay at the hospital and he made sure to tell Shepard exactly that, but Shepard only replied with “it’s an acquired taste”, and maybe he was right but that didn’t mean Kaidan wanted to acquire that taste.

Now he knew all the lines and plots by heart.

When he went back to Vancouver with his mother, the first thing he did was buy and download the movies, he always had one playing in the background, one of the the first five, anyway. He didn't touch the last one. By this point of his fucked up life, he didn’t give a fuck about how ridiculous the bills were because of his screen being always on with the movies, with the money the Alliance gave to his mother on behalf of his father plus his money and the money Shepard left him, he could live two or four more lives without having to lift a fucking finger, so he did that exactly and he hated it.

He hated himself for living a comfortable life without doing shit, he hated himself for making his mother worry, he hated himself because after the war he reported back to base just to be sent back to Vancouver with an honorable discharge, a shit fucking ton of money he didn’t need and a pat in the back.

Humans and Aliens alike knew him as War Hero Spectre Major Kaidan Alenko, only a handful of people knew that his honorable discharge was a masked unfit for duty, because every time he turned around he could see Shepard running towards a reaper, leaving him being, because he couldn’t sleep due to nightmares, because the single thought of continuing with his life without Shepard had made him reckless and borderline suicidal, because he shouldn’t be allowed to hold a gun, anymore. So, he was back on dry land and he was fucking miserable.

Today, he’d forgotten to take his sleeping pills, and anxiety pills and depression pills and muscle pain pills and he couldn’t care less… because he hadn’t forgotten, he just felt like being miserable because today was a full year since the war ended, since Shepard died.

People across the galaxy were celebrating, drinking, dancing, being together and he was crying over a Blasto song. He’d managed to avoid everything related to Blasto 6 because it was the last movie he saw with Shepard just 2 or 3 days before he died, the first date out they had since they got together.

People thought that the Normandy crew was on duty 24/7, they didn’t know that their shore leave ended one day just to have them reach Cronos station the next day and then travel back to Earth after that, they didn’t know they threw a party the same week the war ended, they didn’t know shit, but they still celebrated like…

Shepard died for all of them.

They only saw Shepard, the First Human Spectre, give his life for the war but they never knew John, they didn’t know how warm he was, how much his hands hurt after holding his gun for too long and how much he hated it, how he liked to be the little spoon because he felt protected, how he could go from a fight to a joke in seconds, how much their famous First Human Spectre loved the Second Human Spectre, they didn’t know that he had nightmares, that he blamed himself for the lives he _didn’t_ take but were taken away under his command, that every single night for months, he ran in a forest of lost voices, chasing what he thought he’d never be able to save. The only thing they knew about him was that Shepard was taking the whole galaxy to victory and he proved them right, at the end he did that and more, but at the cost of his own life.

And Kaidan was tired, tired of being alone, despite not living alone, of having to smile for the cameras and say it was an honor to be regarded as a hero, of having a whole speech of what it was to work with Commander Shepard, drilled into his head, of not being able to _be_ normal without pills for everything, he wanted to be with Shepard, he was tired… and alone… he didn’t want to be tired... or alone.

He missed John… and he thought it was time to take matters into his hands that it was time to have a heart to heart with Shepard, that he deserved a sanity check.


End file.
